


I Heard Your Voice on the Telephone

by Tonight_At_Noon



Category: The End of the F'ing World (TV 2017)
Genre: Alyssa's POV, F/M, Romance, enjoy, thought i should try it out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 16:38:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13391895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tonight_At_Noon/pseuds/Tonight_At_Noon
Summary: Alyssa, having returned home after James escaped without her, gets a phone call. [T for language]





	I Heard Your Voice on the Telephone

There is a pen in my hand. I hate pens. They’re too permanent. They’re liars, really, because nothing in this world is permanent. Trust me.

But here my mum is, pointing to the black ink pen I’m holding and then pointing to the piece of paper on the kitchen counter.

I stare at her blankly, like I have no clue what she wants me to do. It pisses her off when I do this. That makes me want to do it more often, and recently, with all the fucked-up shit that’s happened, I’ve been given plenty of opportunities to act like the moronic git she thinks I am.

“Alyssa,” she says in her famous hushed, annoyed tone as she rocks one of the twins. It’s nap time, but he doesn’t care. He keeps pulling at Mum’s earring. “You need to sign it.”

 _Need_. What a funny word. What a funny concept. Mum seems to think I need a lot of things I don’t. She always has.

I don’t  _need_  to sign it. I  _need_  to eat to survive. I  _need_  to sleep.

I need to find him.

“Sign what?” I say, lifting my shoulders in a brief shrug.

She looks as if her head’s gonna explode. You’d think she would be more amenable towards me since I got back from being a wanted girl on the run, but we’ve sort of reverted back to our old ways quicker than I expected.

I think she’s trying to forget I was an accessory to murder. To do that, she has to just pretend nothing’s changed.

I bet it isn’t working.

I tried the same thing right after it happened, and she should take my advice. Pretending doesn’t do shit.

She should just accept the fact that I’m a juvenile delinquent now and move on.

Not that I am a juvenile delinquent in the eyes of the law. Or in the eyes of the media. To them, I’m a helpless girl who was cruelly coerced into following a deranged criminal on his quest to destroy the world.

No one believes I went willingly. Mum lies and tells me she doesn’t believe me either.

The only person who believes me is Tony, but I don’t give a shit what he thinks. I wish it had been him and not that scumbag rapist slash murderer.

“The restraining order, Alyssa,” my mum says breathlessly, having lost one of her earrings. “It must be turned in as soon as possible.”

I look at the piece of paper and back at Mum. Her other earring is gone.

I won’t sign it. I’ve been saying it for two days.

It’s bullshit. What’s a restraining order gonna do? I don’t even know where he is. And if I did, I would be out there looking for him. And when I found him, I’d join him.

Mum’s just scared. This is her way of trying to feel safe. She’s surrounding herself with a false air of security. And since I’m seventeen, she gets to choose who is and who isn’t allowed within five hundred feet of me, our house, and the twins.

Even if I did sign, how the fuck would he know there was a restraining order against him? He wouldn’t, because he’s missing. He probably doesn’t even know what day it is.

That makes me sad. Really, really sad.

I swallow the golf ball forming in my throat and continue staring at my mum like I have no idea what she’s talking about.

She makes a shrill noise and stomps her foot. The baby starts crying.

“You will sign it,” she says, walking past me. “You need to.”

She takes him upstairs. When I hear the door to the twins’ room close, my body instantly reacts. My lips wobble and jerk. My eyes sting with angry, annoyed, miserable tears.

I throw the pen in the sink. As it clatters, banging around, the landline starts ringing. I don’t feel like talking to anyone, but the noise will disturb the twins, so I go into the living room and grab the handset. I don’t recognise the number, but I live dangerously now.

I click the answer button and bring the phone to my ear. “Hello?” There isn’t a response. I strain my ear, listening carefully. “Is anyone there?”

Breathing. I hear it. Soft, almost ragged breaths.

James.

I don’t know how I know, but I fucking do.

I whisper his name. “James.” It comes out scratchy, and I clear my throat. “James,” I say again.

My head is spinning. I look around the room, my heart quickening, punching my ribs, and I find I want to pass out. I move to the plush sofa in front of the telly and collapse, staring up at the white ceiling.

With just his breaths in my head and the twins silent upstairs, I can focus on the rain clinking against the roof.

It’s been raining nonstop since I got back.

“Are you alone?”

I could cry. Actually, I am crying. Hot, bubbling tears drip into my hair. I cover my mouth to muffle my wretched-sounding sobs.

Up the stairs, the door to the twins’ room opens. I freeze, relaxing only when my mum chooses to go into her bedroom. It’s about time for her mid-afternoon nap.

“Yeah,” I say, though the sound is disrupted by a hiccup. Again, I clear my throat. “Yeah, I’m alone.”

Fuck, I miss him. I miss him more than I realised.

Which is saying something because I missed him really bad before.

“I shouldn’t be phoning you,” he says. “But I needed to hear your voice.”

There’s that word again.  _Need_.

This time it makes sense.

“Are you okay?” It’s a silly question, but I have to know. I think I understand that there was a part of me that thought he was dead.

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me,” he says. I will. Until I know he’s safe I will worry about him constantly. “How are you? How’s your head?”

He’s trying to sound casual, but I hear the feathery tremble in his words.

He’s not okay.

More tears escape into my hair. Is salt good for your scalp? I hope so.

“My head’s fine. I’m scared,” I tell him. “And I miss you.“ It’s an understatement, but he’ll think I’m mad if I tell him that I think I’m dying without him.

He laughs, but the sound is broken. “I miss you too.”

“James,” I say, the ceiling becoming a white blob, “where are you?”

“Alyssa.” I’ve always thought my name was stupid, but when James says it, I don’t mind it so much. “I can’t tell you that.”

I don’t know where he is. That doesn’t stop me from picturing him. I close my eyes, letting loose a few more tears, and I see him leaning his head against the side of a phone booth in the middle of nowhere. I bet he’s got some form of facial hair by now. I bet all those hairs are grey.

I can see that his eyes are closed.

Is he picturing me too?

“I want to be with you.”

“If we were normal,” he says, “and none of this had happened, do you think we would be together?”

“Yes,” I say. My response is immediate. “Of course. We’re written in the stars, James. In all of those alternate universes and galaxies and shit, we’re always together. Even when we’re not.”

James takes a second to find something to say. I bite my lip, praying to whatever thing is hiding above my ceiling, asking for James to stay safe.

“We’re not normal, though, are we?” he says eventually.

“No.” But that’s what I like about us. “My mum wants me to sign a restraining order against you.”

“She does?”

“Yeah, but I’m only seventeen for another five months. After my birthday, it disappears.” Another reason why the restraining order is pointless. “James, I won’t sign it.”

“Do you have a choice?” he says.

I’m a fucking mess. I can hardly get air into my lungs. “No.” I scrunch my face, glad for once that James isn’t here. I would hate for him to see me missing him like this. “Will I ever see you again?”

He’s in my head once more. In my fantasy, or maybe it’s a premonition of sorts (my dad used to tell me my grandma was a witch), he struggles to fight his own bout of tears.

I want him so much.

I  _need him_.

This can’t be healthy.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “If they find me, you probably will. I’m sure it’ll be all over the news.”

“Don’t joke about that,” I warn, though a small, choking laugh escapes without permission. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I never see you again.”

“You’ll forget about me eventually.”

“No, I’d never” I swear. An idea pops into my mind. “If you manage to stay off the map, maybe I’ll be able to join you when I leave school.”

“I like the sound of that,” James says.

“Tell me it’ll work,” I beg, sure I’m wasting all of the fluids in my body on producing tears. “Tell me that when I leave school, we’ll find each other and leave the country for good.”

“We will,” he promises. “We’ll move to America. We’ll get there by boat and live in some midwestern state that nobody cares about.”

“And we’ll change our names and our accents and get jobs working with farm animals.”

“And we’ll live happily ever after,” he says.

“Yeah,” I agree. “Happily ever after.”

We will. I know it.

The door to my mum’s room opens. She probably couldn’t sleep. Too many thoughts zooming around in her empty head.

“I have to go,” I say, wishing I could teleport to wherever he is. I can’t be in this house anymore. It’s destroying me. “I don’t want to go.”

“I don’t want you to, either. But you have to,” James says. “Goodbye, Alyssa. I’ll phone again soon.”

“You better,” I say. “Goodbye, James.”

The line goes silent. A gentle buzz rattles my eardrum, and I am suddenly alone.

If I was a spy, I could trace that call. I could get his coordinates and find him like that. But I’m not a spy. I’m nothing of the sort.

But he’ll phone soon. He said so. Despite how dangerous it is, he will call just to hear my voice. And I will pick up, just to hear his. And we’ll pretend we’re sitting in front of each other in our unknown midwestern state, laughing at each other’s attempts to do an American accent.

That sounds like fucking heaven to me.

I just hope we don’t have to die for it to come true.


End file.
